The term automation was coined by John Diebold (born 1926), a pioneering management consultant and entrepreneur, when he shortened the more correct term automatization. His classic book Automation (1952) was the first to advocate this process, and to consider the general implications of this process for manufacturing and society. Using what were at that time only emerging concepts of control, communication, and computers, he described the coming industrial world of automated production and predicted the incipient information revolution. In pioneering the automation of production systems, Diebold extended the concepts of materials handling to information handling, to analyzing information flows, and to studying ways to automate office processes.

The Automation Process

In general the term automation describes the employment of automatic devices as a substitute for human physical or mental labor. An automatic device is one that performs a specified function without human intervention. Critical in one form of this process...